Synopsis: Low on funds and having recently left his insular religious community, Yakov reluctantly accepts an offer from his former rabbi and confidante to take on the responsibility of an overnight “shomer,” fulfilling the Jewish practice of watching over the body of a deceased community member. Shortly after arriving at the recently departed’s dilapidated house …Read More
Synopsis: Mary Shelley descends into an opium-fuelled fever dream while composing Frankenstein and carrying on a torrid love affair with Percy Shelley. As she writes, the characters of her novel come to life and begin to plague her relationship with Percy. Before long, she must choose between true love and her literary masterpiece. One of …Read More
Synopsis: An amateur documentarian gets more than he bargained for when he sets out to make a film about a hateful, basement-dwelling recluse. I generally make a point of not reading up on films before sitting down to watch them. Wherever possible, I try to let a piece of media speak for itself, only digging …Read More
Synopsis: To console his friend Jerry (Davy Raphaely) who believes his wife Lisa (Sarah French) has cheated on, Mike (Dave Sheridan) takes him to a brothel and orders him “The Special”—unwittingly throwing him down a nightmarish rabbit hole of twisted addiction. The Special is one of those movies that faces an uphill climb to get …Read More
Synopsis: A bereaved couple attempts to perform a “reverse exorcism” to bring their dead grandson back. In the process, they end up summoning much more than they bargained for… One demographic that often gets the short end of the stick in horror is the elderly. If they’re not passing along quick, foreboding messages to campers, …Read More
Synopsis: Strange cravings and hallucinations befall a young couple after seeking shelter in the home of an ageing farmer and her peculiar son. A Nightstream 2020 Review There are some horror premises that have been done so many times it’s challenging to wring any fresh blood from them at all. Director Devereux Milburn proves that …Read More
Synopsis: In the dead of winter, a musician travels to a remote cottage to work on new material, but soon finds herself under attack from a mysterious dark presence. A Salem Horror Fest 2020 Review It’s a challenging feat to be alone on screen for most of a film’s runtime without losing the audience’s attention. …Read More
Synopsis: After the death of his father, a brilliant college student returns to his family home along with his girlfriend and childhood friend. But the horrors from his childhood aren’t as dead and gone as he once thought… A Salem Horror Fest 2020 Review Returning home after the death of a loved one is never …Read More
Synopsis: David (Brian Landis Folkins), a lonely bachelor caring for his ageing mother (Kathleen Brady), is looking for companionship through a video dating service. Having little luck, he stumbles across a corny VHS tape called Rent-A-Pal, hosted by the charismatic Andy (Wil Wheaton). The tape provides some much-needed company and compassion—but Andy’s friendship comes at …Read More
Synopsis: Over the course of one night, a junkie nurse, her scheming cousin, and a group of black market organ-trading criminals get caught up in a heist gone wrong. A Fantasia International Film Festival 2020 Review We’ve all had those shifts at work that just. Won’t. End. Writer and director Brea Grant’s 12 Hour Shift …Read More
Synopsis: Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone), a teenage runaway plagued with terrifying nightmares, signs up for a university sleep study to avoid living on the streets. There, she finds an unexpected friend and confidant in Jeremy (Landon Liboiron), the scientist overseeing the study. But there’s something strange about the proceedings, and being under observation seems to …Read More
Synopsis: On a secluded farm, a man is slowly dying. Bedridden and fighting through his final breaths, his wife is slowly succumbing to overwhelming grief. To help their mother and say goodbye to their father, siblings Louise (Marin Ireland) and Michael (Michael Abbott Jr.) return to their family farm. It doesn’t take long for them …Read More
Synopsis: After responding to a help wanted sign outside the local mortician’s office, a young woman (Caitlin Custer) asks funeral director Montgomery Dark (Clancy Brown) to tell her scary stories about how some of the corpses he’s attended to died. Dark is more than happy to oblige… A Fantasia International Film Festival 2020 Review The …Read More
Synopsis: Barry is a drug-addled, abusive bastard who—after yet another bender—is abducted by aliens. Barry takes a backseat as an alien visitor assumes control of his body and takes it for a joyride through Cape Town. What follows is an onslaught of drugs, sex, and violence as our alien tourist enters the weird and wonderful …Read More
Synopsis: Two sisters vie for the affections of a man who may or may not be a vampire. A Fantasia International Film Festival 2020 Review Climate of the Hunter feels like a much older movie, and not just because of its retro wardrobe. The lush visual style, copious lens flares, and frequently arch line delivery …Read More
Synopsis: Once upon a frenzied time, woman meets man. Woman dances with man. Man kisses woman. Man grips woman. Woman escapes man. Man chases woman. Nothing new—or is there? A Fantasia International Film Festival 2020 Review The early scenes of Hunted detail an experience that’s all too familiar to many women. Fed up with her …Read More
Synopsis: After being flooded with anonymous death threats and hateful messages on social media, columnist and author Femke Boot (Katja Herbers) finally snaps—taking bloody her revenge on her online critics. A Fantasia International Film Festival 2020 Review Online vitriol is nothing new, but it certainly feels like its reached critical mass in recent years, fueled …Read More
Synopsis: After being put on trial for the genocidal massacre of thousands of native Mayans, an ageing and paranoid former Guatemalan dictator shelters in his opulent home with his wife, daughter, and granddaughter. Of the domestic staff, only one loyal housekeeper remains… That is, until a mysterious young maid arrives at the family’s door. Most …Read More
Synopsis: In 1983, Tatyana (Oksana Akinshina), a neuropsychologist known for her unorthodox methods, is summoned to a remote facility to examine Soviet cosmonaut Konstantin (Pyotr Fyodorov), whose capsule crash-landed. But as Tatyana soon discovers, Konstantin didn’t return from space alone—and the officials overseeing the facility are less concerned with helping him than they are about …Read More
Synopsis: As they prepare to perform a ritual to invoke the powers of the ancient witch Ashura, a coven of undergrad occultists seeks out a fifth member to replace the one their leader killed. In the process, they unwittingly unleash hell on their campus. Let’s cut to the chase: Coven is a movie you’ve seen …Read More
Synopsis: A war is raging between gods and demons, with an unstoppable inter-dimensional terror – THE BLEED – destroying everything it touches. From ancient alien civilisations through to modern day London, through to deep space and beyond, nothing and no one is safe. The Bleed wants flesh. It wants to destroy life. It wants to …Read More
Synopsis: After heading to their family’s beach house during the off season in the hope of reconnecting, troubled college sweethearts Emily (Liana Liberato) and Randall (Noah Le Gros) run into older couple Mitch (Jake Weber) and Jane (Maryann Nagel) and form an unexpected bond. But their peace is disturbed by increasingly strange environmental phenomena—and the …Read More
Synopsis: A pair of ghost hunters are hired by a wealthy family to banish the violent entity that’s tormenting them. The spirit of the family’s former nanny, who mysteriously disappeared after rumours spread that she was abusing the children, this entity is known locally as the Candy Witch because she used to give treats to …Read More
Synopsis: Pursued by a warship, a machine with a defective A.I. system crash lands on the planet Apus 7. Helped by the women of the planet, who understand its plight, an entity (Joëlle Berckmans) emerges from the machine in the form of a woman and flies into space. But the commander (Anders Heinrichsen) of the …Read More
Tell-tale signs of outstanding cinematic talent right here! I don’t often choose to write a formal review of short films for which I receive screeners. Usually, I Tweet my thoughts on the film when I receive a request from an eager filmmaker who’s interested in what Professor Horror, as I’ve come to be known on …Read More
Synopsis: When the dead start coming back to life outside the isolated Mi’qmaq reserve of Red Crow, the Indigenous inhabitants, immune to the virus, are forced to make a difficult choice: refuse refuge, or risk extinction—both of their people, and of the human race. Since its very beginnings, the zombie sub-genre has been a carrier …Read More
Synopsis: While staying with his father for the summer, a teenage boy struggling to come to terms with his parents’ divorce starts to suspect there’s something terribly wrong with the neighbour… As a horror fan, sometimes you want to watch films that are going to rewrite the rules of the genre forever. Other times, you …Read More
Synopsis: An unsatisfied man has a sexual re-awakening after his first-ever prostate exam. But what starts as a harmless kink takes a deadly turn as he develops a voracious desire to insert objects—and, before long, living things—into his anus. There was a point early into Butt Boy when I thought, “Why am I watching this? …Read More
Synopsis: Those of you that remember the travesty that was 2015’s The Gallows will probably wonder who greenlit the follow-up and why. I, also, would like to know. The Gallows was an un-scary dud of a horror film that buried the found footage genre so far underground that we’ve seen nothing from it at the …Read More
A Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2019 Review If Drop Dead Fred was filtered through the surreal and emotional lens of Jacob’s Ladder, you’d have Daniel Isn’t Real, the sophomore feature of Adam Egypt Mortimer. The film is based on the novel In This Way I Was Saved by Brian DeLeeuw, who also co-wrote the script …Read More
